Breast is Beast
Warning: Boob talk. Photos are mostly of Ender, because I thought (most) readers would rather see baby pictures than pictures of my boobs.
Unfortunately, I’ve never wanted large breasts. I was an A cup before I got pregnant, and a C cup at the end of pregnancy when I started shopping for nursing bras, and naturally I’ve only gotten bigger. Matt kind of likes it, but they hurt so badly that he doesn’t get to do anything with them anyway.
I know several people that have been unable to breastfeed for various reasons. So I told myself I wouldn’t let it get me down if I couldn’t nurse, but honestly, in spite of that, I expected nursing to be easy. I mean, women have been doing it as long as there have been people, right? And females have been doing it for as long as there have been mammals. So how could it be THAT hard?
And it hasn’t been, relatively speaking. I mean, it took both Ender and I a couple days to get the hang of it.
Apparently I can’t just stick him next to a nipple and expect him to go to town. A few days after giving birth, my arms were so sore from trying to hold him in place that I couldn’t tell which arm I’d got my tetanus shot (gotta get the Tdap to keep Ender safe from whooping cough).
Initially, the most difficult part of nursing Ender was keeping him awake long enough to eat anything. He’s getting a bit more lively now, but starting off, Ender was a sleepy baby.
While we were in the hospital it was 50/50 whether we would have to wake him up to eat, and when he did, he’d fall asleep as soon as his lips touched my boob. One of the lactation consultants finally told me to try “irritating” him when he stopped eating, and that let him get better meals.
These days, he’s nursing like a pro and I’ve more or less figured out the positioning issues. I’ve been very lucky that nursing has not been difficult for me, but as it turns out, “not hard” is not the same thing as “easy.”
The first, worst problem has more or less resolved itself now, or maybe I’m just used to it and better at controlling it. Milk. EVERYWHERE. The first few days back from the hospital, I didn’t bother to wear a shirt, because I had to change every fifteen minutes.
Nothing could contain the milk.
It wasn’t just leaking, I was, at times, literally spraying milk in haphazard directions. Disposable nursing pads are pretty much useless and the reusable cloth ones are only marginally better. I really can’t fully express how much milk there was, how everywhere it was, and how inhuman that made me feel. Fortunately, as I said, this seems to be somewhat under control now, though I still end up changing clothes far more frequently than I would have pre-milk.
Sleeping is a challenge because the bras are too restricting, and even the nursing camis are tighter than I’m used to, making me feel like I can’t breathe. Those were still my best option until I managed to get a sleeping bra.
Whatever I wear to sleep in, I have to tuck a towel inside to keep from leaking all over the sheets, leaving me with a warm, puffy chest that combined with my unusually sized boobs, still convinces me that I’ve managed to fall asleep holding Ender every time I wake up. This morning I heard him fussing and actually starting cooing to my boobs before I realized he was in his bassinet.
Clothing in general is a problem. Maternity clothes are pretty easy to come by. There is the standby Motherhood store which can be found in most malls. I’d always heard that maternity clothes were horribly overpriced, but I found that so long as I avoided the “designer” label (A Pea in the Pod) the prices there were pretty reasonable. Target, Kohls, Macys and Pennys also all have maternity sections with more limited selection but decent prices.
Nursing clothes are an entirely different matter.
Pennys has a few nursing bras, but otherwise zilch in terms of nursing clothing. Motherhood has 2 foot wide section dedicated to nursing bras and camis. All other stores: nothing.
Mind you, most of these stores have nursing clothes… but only online, so if you want to try something on, you’re out of luck. Not that I have a whole lot of time to go shopping with a new baby. Even then, the selection online is pretty limited, and for some reason, MUCH more expensive than maternity clothes.
The lack of selection, and the higher prices, are probably both because there is less demand for nursing clothes. Nearly everyone I talked to said they either just kept wearing maternity tops (very stretchy so allowed access) or just looked for non-nursing stretchy tops that allowed them to pull one side up while leaving the other boob covered. I didn’t feel this was an option for me, because after going out and buying 5 nursing bras, I found that I couldn’t figure out how to NURSE in a nursing bra. So I needed something designed to give a little support, and allow a place for nursing pads. Which left me searching for nursing clothes, and stuck with crappy selection and pricing. I should be set for now, at least until it gets colder. Theoretically, by then I’ll have figured out how to handle nursing in normal clothes.
The most current issue is the actual process of nursing.
When my milk first came in, I thought I had oversupply, the nursing “problem” that every mother would probably love to have. My boobs hurt so bad that before the end of Ender’s first week Matt and I broke the rules about bottle feeding. To avoid nipple confusion, you aren’t supposed to introduce a bottle until four weeks or so, but we had Matt feed Ender right before bed while I pumped to reduce the pressure, allowing me to sleep.
Over the next few days though I felt like my supply was going down… whether because of the pumping, or just because Ender’s appetite was growing faster than I was producing milk.
Everything I read said the best way to up supply is to “feed on demand” rather than trying to get the baby to feed on a schedule, even a seemingly demanding schedule of every three hours. So… demand is what I’m trying.
Only, Ender doesn’t feed “every hour” as women online complain about their babies that feed “constantly.” Ender literally feeds constantly. I nurse him, put him down, he cries, wakes up and starts rooting again, wanting to eat. There are times of the day where I am doing nothing but nurse, for hours at a time.
Now if he were only sucking halfheartedly, I’d say it’s just comfort nursing, and try to get him to take a pacifier. But Ender seems to actually be eating each time he demands to nurse. I now have no concept of what sort of supply I have, because when he’s in a nursing mood, my boobs never seem to get much above empty, and when he’s napping, they’re full to the brim, painful, and I’m liable to end up shooting milk again. I’ll spare you a detailed description of Ender’s diaper contents, but I do think he’s getting enough. It’s still frustrating when I’m stuck feeding him in his apparently insatiable periods, and a little worrying that I’ve been unable to build up stored milk for when we go out.
I do realize I’m having a pretty easy time with nursing, it’s just not quite the magical mommy mystery that le leche promised me.
I enjoy nursing when it’s not the 5th marathon nursing session in a row, but it’s not uncomplicated.
I don’t so much resent waking up as I dread trying to get Ender back to sleep in the night, and when Matt has him with a bottle, I’m simultaneously relieved that I can stay in bed, and jealous that I’m not the one cuddling with Ender. I still find it very cool (and sort of weird) that I’m making food for my baby, but it depresses me that whenever I’m holding him while he’s awake, he’s fussing to be fed. In fact we have recently confirmed that Ender pretty much only goes to sleep at night for Matt… not because he’s doing anything different (we think) but because without fail, Ender smells the milk on me and starts demanding more, even if he’s just fed for a half hour. The fantabulous thing about this is it means we can probably get a good night’s sleep two out of seven days a week, on the nights Matt is free to help me.
I’ve been told by friends with kids that it gets easier, and I’ll admit that the various frustrations of nursing have not yet pushed me to consider formula, which seems like it would be even more of a hassle, not to mention unnecessary expense.
I have been pumping more, just an ounce or two after a couple feedings a day, because having that bottle as an option is kind of awesome.
Like most parts of new parenthood, nursing seems totally under my control on the days when I’ve had a good night’s sleep, and completely overwhelming on the zombie days. Every day it seems a little easier and a little more normal. Of course, the sleeping situation is only going downhill, so in terms of overwhelming vs. manageable, I seem to have reached a state of equilibrium. I guess that’s just a part of parenting too.
Ten Days
So now that I’m a parent (Wait, I’m what? Weird.), it’s obvious that everyone wants to see endless photos of my son (My what again?) even though each one looks pretty much the same as the next. You’re welcome world.
We got home from the hospital Saturday afternoon. Matt’s mom came in for the weekend to help us out and took good care of us while we tried to figure out a routine. She was nice enough to take Ender’s first photo outside the house, as soon as we got home.
Ender got a cute hat from the hospital. No idea who makes them, but I find it interesting that the fluffy knit hat, like the slightly more disposable hats they keep on the baby during the hospital stay, and the blankets used for swaddling, incorporates both blue and pink so theoretically no one will complain that their baby’s gender is being bended by pink blankets. Not that anyone would do that (people would totally do that).
We picked out a green onesie for Ender to wear home from the hospital, the first real “outfit” he wore. This lead to the realization that onesies are not nearly as convenient as I had assumed pre-baby: you have to get it over their HEAD?!
My aunt Marion sent me a Moby wrap for a baby shower gift. I’d registered for this sort of skeptically. I though they looked cool, but had some doubts about how easy they’d be to use. Watching Matt go step by step through the video tutorial didn’t exactly convince me, but now that we’ve played with it some, I’m sold. We also have an Ergo carrier, but we’re still waiting for the infant insert to arrive. I’m sure they’ll both have their uses. The Moby is GREAT for around the house. I suspect the Ergo will be the winner for outside, and will probably last a little longer in terms of baby age.
Being a new parent seems to move in waves from complete bliss to desperate how do we manage this mode. I’m actually pretty surprised at how speedy my recovery has been. I still have some pain, which I only notice about every six hours as the motrin starts to wear off, but my energy level is WAY higher than it was during the last couple weeks of pregnancy and certainly higher than I expected considering how I felt after giving birth.
The biggest post labor issue I’ve had was the edema (swelling). For one thing, I didn’t have any idea that this even happened… I thought swelling was a late pregnancy issue, not a postpartum issue. For another thing, even though the appearance wasn’t all that different from my swelling during pregnancy, this swelling just felt SO much worse. I found a poster on a baby forum who described it as walking on water balloons, which came close to what I felt, but my reaction was almost more existential.
I wanted to describe the feeling as numb even though I had no loss of sensation.
What I really felt was that my feet and hands didn’t belong to me. I could control them, I could receive sensory signals, but my hands were not a part of me. I was about ready to call up Oliver Sacks, because it was something right out of one of his books. The three or so days of this I experienced are probably the closest I came to losing it. Forget being kept up by Ender, between leaking milk EVERYWHERE and not owning my body parts, I couldn’t sleep at all.
Fortunately the swelling went down a couple days ago and the detached limbs feeling went with it.
Now sleep is a problem, but not as much as I expected. Ender sleeps very well at night (probably too well, babies with jaundice apparently tend to be kind of lethargic) but we wake him every three hours to eat.
Interestingly, this is revealing how very different my and Matt’s sleep needs are. In the past, we’ve noticed that Matt does far better with sleep deprivation than I do.
He can usually function just fine on 5 hours a night for several days at a time, or less for a day, then he’ll need a weekend’s good full (8 hours) sleep to recover.
On the other hand, I get stupid with lack of of sleep if I don’t get 8 OR MORE hours most nights. Or at least that was true before pregnancy.
I seem to need a little less now, which may have something to do with hormones, or may just be practice since sleeping during pregnancy was pretty terrible towards the end.
Either way, I still tend to need a good 6+ hours or I’m pretty much useless for the rest of the day, and I need a longer night’s sleep right away to get my brain back.
With that history, I expected Matt to do better with newborn sleep issues than I do, but as it turns out, broken sleep is a much bigger problem for Matt than for me. This is most likely because even before I got pregnant, I had disrupted sleep 99% of the time. I already sleep like a baby- that is, not in very long stretches. I haven’t “slept through the night” since I was a baby. So having to wake up every few hours isn’t nearly as much of a change for me as it is for Matt. We’ll see if this continues on when Matt goes back to work and won’t be up to help as much, or for that matter if Ender continues to allow me to sleep in 3 hour chunks.
I’m a bit worried about how I’ll do in general once Matt goes back to work. He’s been doing so amazing as a dad.
The first day after giving birth I literally needed a nurse to help me walk to the bathroom. I managed to take a shower, but only technically- I spent the whole time under the water leaning on the handicapped bars. I couldn’t stand upright for more than a few seconds at a time.
This left Matt to do the bulk of non-nursing baby care. When it was time to nurse, Matt brought Ender to me and helped prop up pillows so I could try to find the right position. I don’t think I changed a diaper until day 5 or so, not at all while we were at the hospital. Neither of us minded the arrangement (at least if Matt did he never said so), I was too exhausted to want to do anything more taxing than holding Ender, and Matt got to have lots of close time with new baby.
That’s sort of the pattern we fell into though, reinforced by the discomfort of edema. When I called my midwife to ask about the swelling, they asked a few questions to make sure I wasn’t having blood pressure issues (we have a bp monitor so this was pretty easy to rule out) and told me it was normal, I’d just need to stay off my feet more, elevate them when possible, take epsom salt baths and drink lots of water. Since I wasn’t on my feet that much to begin with at that point, that meant I spent most of my time the first few days home sitting on the couch, holding Ender.
This wasn’t completely useless, since for jaundice we needed to have as much of him in indirect sunlight as possible (as in ideally he should just be wearing a diaper), and the only way he’s content is if he’s either swaddled or being held.
But as lovely as it is to hold my baby, this doesn’t exactly prepare me to care for him independently.
Matt’s mom will be in town the first week he goes back to work, which will be a huge help, and I’ve been slowly working on doing the various baby activities on my own.
My first step was to make sure I can nurse Ender without help. This is harder than it sounds, which I don’t understand at all, because honestly, what did women do in the 18th century, or pre-history, before they invented boppys? The first time I tried to nurse him just by holding him up to my nipple, but apparently it’s not that easy, at least not with a newborn.
It’s not easy to juggle a baby, a boppy, make sure I have what I need/want within reach (like water), have nursing pads, soothies and Lansinoh ready for use, and have towels, blankets, or something absorbent to catch the GALLONS of milk leaking out of my body (ok probably only ounces, but I was seriously getting soaked with the stuff, especially the first few days my milk came in… it was horrifying).
I’m sure this will become second nature as time goes on, but it took me a while, and a lot of careful maneuvering, the first attempt. I’m much better now, but it’s still awkward.
I’ve not had any trouble dressing Ender, but Matt did all the swaddling at the hospital, and while he’s nowhere near as adept as the nurses, (they wrap up a baby like cartoon rodeo stars) he got pretty good by the end, so that Ender would only escape after several hours.
It’s pretty funny, Ender loves being swaddled, it’s one of the things that calms him down almost immediately, but he writhes around trying to escape the whole time. He always manages in the end, even from the nurse wrapped straight jackets.
Matt got pretty good at it, and was doing every part of the night routine but nursing, but every time I tried a swaddle, Ender took it apart within minutes.
I’m sure I would have gotten the hang of it eventually, but we ended up picking up some velcro swaddlers, that are much easier than a 30 inch blanket.
I was able to get Ender in the pre-made swaddle without too much trouble, and he can’t get out of that one, though he’ll occasionally manage to get a hand poking out the side.
Swaddling was key to me being able to do anything at all during the day, but mastering the moby was probably even more important.
It’s amazing how much difference having two hands free makes, not just in freedom of motion, but in emotional weight. The wrap keeps him very securely next to me, so I get all the upsides of holding him, but can still roam around and, you know, do stuff.
I’m still trying to figure out how tight to tie the thing so Ender is secure without being too squished, but the wrap was probably the best thing I’ve learned for letting me feel like I might be able to manage with Matt at work.
Of course I know I will manage… as with the nursing, women (and more recently the occasional man) have been managing for quite a while.
I’m sort of easing into relieving Matt of baby care because I think it will make things less difficult when he’s not shouting distance away (I cover Ender’s ears) but I don’t want to take over too much because I don’t want to rob him of time with the baby before he goes back to work. Even if I don’t get used to it, I’m aware that I’ll learn the baby skills when I need to learn the baby skills… sort of like Matt did at the hospital.
Mostly what I’m worried about is being lonely. I think I’ve got a bit of an edge here on many women who start to feel isolated after a couple weeks of maternity leave. Not leaving the social setting of a workplace, there won’t be as much culture clash for me, but it’s still easy to see how the all-consuming task of new parenthood could be overwhelming.
Matt saved two weeks of his vacation time for the baby’s birth, and the first week was taken up at the hospital. This week, at home with him and watching him be with Ender, has been so special, and so valuable. As hard as it is right now not to be an Ender-hog (and sometimes I’m an Ender-hog even though I know I shouldn’t be) the best part of this week has been the calm (Yes, calm! Don’t ask me how.) warm exploration of our new family.
We’ve got Matt giving Ender a bottle before bed now. We decided to ignore the expert advice on waiting so that he could have the feeding experience. I’m greedy for more though, more time together and more time watching the two of them.
I know I can manage on my own, but I also know that I am going to miss Matt so much when he’s back at the office, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to miss being immersed in baby land, even if he’s simultaneously a little relieved.
Olivander
Olivander Call Neely, born at 12:15 am June 1st. We’re calling him Ender for short.
Warning: many bodily fluids described ahead. If you aren’t interested in reading about the birth, skip the bulk of the text here for photos below.
My water broke at 4:30 am on Tuesday. I had been feeling little trickles for about half an hour, but kept saying, no, it’s NOT my water, until finally I decided to get up and use the restroom and WHOOSH, just like in the movies. Ender wasn’t due until June 11, and with a half constructed changing table, giant boxes waiting to be broken down and removed, and all sorts of pre-baby chaos in the house, Matt and I were hoping for just a LITTLE more time, but just as everyone who took a look at my giant belly predicted, Ender came a little early.
If you want to see a sleeping man leap straight to a standing position, “damnit, my water broke” are apparently magic words. Actually, a week later, Matt is still a little jumpy whenever I say the word “water” in the bedroom.
Though we’d been warned in our childbirth class that when the water breaks it doesn’t just stop… I wasn’t fully prepared for the fact that it just. kept. coming. I called my midwife Colleen from the bathroom and left a message with her answering service, then texted my doula Kim, and our friend Willow who is thinking of becoming a midwife or doula and who we had invited to attend the birth. Irregular contractions started shortly after my water broke, but they were so mild I wasn’t sure that’s what they were. I called the midwife again a couple hours later when I didn’t hear anything (she was sort of busy in another labor).
We put a towel down on the bed and Matt and I took a nap, figuring the easy part of labor would take a while, and we ought to get some rest while we could. Shockingly, we both managed to get a couple hours of sleep in.
When I woke up contractions had stopped entirely. We heard back from Colleen’s office around 10 or 11 I think. I was told that normally they’d recommend I stay at home and labor there as long as possible to avoid ending up with Pitocin, but because I was group B Strep positive and had ruptured membranes (water broken) they wanted to get me in to be checked and figure out what to do from there.
On the car ride over to Colleen’s office, contractions had restarted, were consistently 5 minutes apart and irritating but still not especially painful. I had a couple more painful contractions walking to the office, and then once I was set up on the table to be checked, they stopped entirely again. I found this confusing, but I guess that’s all pretty normal. I was at 3 cm, so Colleen recommended Matt and I go to the nearby mall (air conditioning) and walk around for an hour or so, to try and get things going. I think this was around noon, but I’m not entirely sure. She asked us to call and check in at 4 (pm) and I assume at the point we would have needed to start talking induction.
As soon as we started walking, contractions started again, and they became more painful, though still tolerable. I was a little worried about how bad they’d get though, because they seemed to be almost entirely in my back, and I’ve not heard warm fuzzy things about back labor.
By about 2, contractions were getting to be less what I would call tolerable. We wanted to get a meal in me before starting what we figured would be a loooong day(s), so we drove to Liquid Planet for a smoothie and a pita. I didn’t manage to eat much. We left after fifteen minutes or so to go to the hospital, where I was pre-registered.
I should probably explain here, that I was trying to go for an unmediated birth. This is not for any philosophical reasons, it’s for phobia reasons: I hate needles. Pregnancy HAS actually reduced this fear considerably, along with years of annual flu shots and now, weekly to twice monthly allergy injections (2 in each arm), but the idea of a GIANT NEEDLE in my spine freaked me out, and I was way more afraid of that than the pain, so epidural was the course of last resort. I’d requested the holistic birthing suite. It’s a recently added labor room with a large jacuzzi bath for laboring and is generally set up for natural birth. That room was already occupied however, so we were put in a different room with a big baby pool instead. All the birthing rooms at St. Johns are private, so I didn’t really mind.
Colleen was still in another birth (I think a different one, apparently May has been insane for births) so the nurse set me up on a fluid IV until she could get a script for the antibiotics (for the GBS). They wanted to get me two doses before the birth. I think I threw a wrench in the works here… I’d forgotten to mention an amoxacillin resistance. They always ask about allergies… but resistance just means it stops working, and so I never thought to mention it. It was lucky I was reading about GBS treatment a few days earlier and saw that the normal treatment is penicillin. So I think it took longer than expected to get me sorted with antibiotics, and as a result I was laying in bed for a couple hours with a fluid IV and increasingly bad back labor. The nurse who set me up was very sweet and, reading my needle phobia, got my blood draw done at the same time as the IV poke (not exactly sure how that works).
At this point no one really knew how far along I was, because the plan had been to wait for Colleen to check me to avoid extra risk of infection from lots of checks, and Colleen was still caught up in labor. I hadn’t called Kim (doula) or Willow (trainee doula) yet, because the idea is to wait until active labor, and everyone figured I should wait to hear how far along I was. I knew I was in pain, but since I had no idea how BAD the pain would get, I wasn’t sure. When Colleen arrived, she took one look at me and said we should get me up and moving. She was a little surprised that I was still on an IV instead of just the heplock, and got the antibiotics truck rolling so I could be a little more mobil. Colleen suggested I move to the toilet in the meantime, which I found pretty gross, but the change in position did seem to help for a while. She also said yes, for the love of all that is holy or unholy, call the doulas (she may not have put it like that, I think my pain was starting to translate language in interesting ways). I was only at 4cm, which probably should have been discouraging, but Colleen made it sound like good progress.
Both Doulas were on the way, but I think I was still on the toilet when I said, get me some drugs, PLEASE. I had been mildly freaked at having a heplock, though mostly distracted by contractions, but at this point I was wholly thankful to have it, as it made the nubain that much easier to get into my blood.
Can I just say, nubain is awesome? I moved from the toilet to the rocker and the contractions still hurt, but I didn’t care that it hurt. I LOVED the nubain. The nurse said, “Oh yeah, you’re high,” and I said, “YES I am.” Anyway.
Kim and Willow showed up at around the same time, with me still flying but the pain sharpening through the drugs. When I started to have a hard time again, Kim got me up from the rocker, and had me kneel, leaning on a birthing ball. This helped some, but not enough. What DID help was the pressure Kim applied to my lower back. I think she showed Matt and Willow how to do this as well, but I was starting to lose track of who was doing what at this point.
For some reason they want you at 5 cm before you can use the birthing tub, but my pain levels were rising rapidly, and the second dose of nubain didn’t help for nearly as long as the first. I started to talk about an epidural, but Kim suggested I get checked to see if I was far enough along to use the tub. So we did that.
I don’t think anyone expected me to be further along than 5 cm, but I was at 7. They started filling the tub, and I tried to figure out what I wanted to do. I had a pretty good idea about how the rest of the night was going to go.
I think I was progressing faster than people thought I was. Colleen had predicted (out of my earshot) a baby sometime after breakfast. First time labors aren’t supposed to move all that fast, but the pain seemed to be escalating fast… I had a feeling if I got in the tub I’d lose my window for an epidural by the time I needed one. In the end I figured I’d give it a try, and if it didn’t help enough, I’d get the epidural.
It did help, a lot, especially with water on my back and Matt stroking my hair. It ended up working out really well for me that the birthing suite was occupied: the baby pool used as a replacement was padded everywhere so I could move around without fighting hard surfaces. The walls were like vinyl couches.
Everything still hurt more than I felt I could cope with. At this point everything goes from kind of blurry to almost blank in my memory. I think I went into transition almost as soon as I got into the tub. It was horrific. It’s as close as I’ve come to crying from pain in my adult life. Friends had told us that the screaming you see on TV is unrealistic, but let me tell you, I am a screamer. Also a curser, though I’d like to point out that my swearing wasn’t directed at anyone, and I don’t believe I ever resorted to screaming, “you did this to me,” at Matt.
I think the only reason I didn’t say, “that’s it, get me the epidural,” is that I sort of zonked out in the short peace between contractions and couldn’t focus long enough to say anything.
I have no idea how long transition lasted. At some point I started feeling “pushy” and when I mentioned it Kim and the nurse said to go ahead and push. Colleen wasn’t around at that point, I think she was nap-recovering in another room from her back to back deliveries, so I started pushing halfheartedly, not really sure.
I think at this point I managed to vocalize that I wanted an epidural if it wasn’t too late. I was pretty sure it was too late, so I wasn’t too crushed when they got me out of the tub to check me and announced I was fully dilated, and someone ran to get Colleen.
Kim kept saying, “push through the pain,” and eventually I realized that pushing actually made the pain of the contraction LESS and I started pushing with a lot more enthusiasm. They asked me if wanted to get back in the tub, but I was pretty sure I didn’t have the energy/coordination/balance to get back in, much less back OUT again, and I did not want to deliver in the water, so we continued in bed. I don’t remember when Colleen got there, or when they added the birthing bar, and when I look at the nurse in the photos, I don’t even recognize her (there were a couple shift changes while I was in labor).
The pushing actually hurt much less than transition. It was incredibly HARD, but such a relief to be in less pain that I was able to joke around a bit with everyone in between contractions. There was still considerable pain, I was still yelling and cursing, but it was more about the exertion than the agony. Colleen was awesome about explaining that the almost unbearable pressure/pain/stretching at the end of each contraction let me stretch more slowly. Kim managed to get me to relax between and prepare for the next. For the most part, I think pushing was within my coping range, but it was probably the most physically taxing thing I’ve ever had to do.
At first pushing was fairly productive, according to Matt, Kim and Willow you could physically SEE the difference as Ender moved down. One of the few times I opened my eyes, I glanced down and was startled at how flat my belly was. Progress seemed to stall right at the end though, and everyone kept telling me I needed to push harder/more. I didn’t exactly have more to put into it. Eventually Colleen said if we didn’t get him out soon she’d need to do an episiotomy or get the vacuum. She was actually numbing me up for the an episiotomy which got me a bit panicky (the needles, not the thought of cutting which I wasn’t thrilled about either) but I finally managed to get him out in the next push.
Before, they kept talking about how he would “pop” out once he got over that edge, and that’s really what it felt like.
I actually thought Colleen had bopped him on the head to somehow get him to jump out (it didn’t make any more sense in my head to be honest) and then there was this wiggly mass of baby on the bed. Matt was supposed to get to hold him first, but the umbilical cord wasn’t quite long enough for that, so they put him on my chest. He was sort of greyish blue, which really worried me while they were suctioning out his lungs. The first of many freakouts in parenting, I realize. I’m pretty sure it was only a matter of seconds before they cleared his lungs and he started screaming in earnest, but it felt like quite a lot longer. He pinked up pretty soon once they got him crying, though his feet and hands stayed purplish for a bit.
I literally do not remember ever seeing that nurse. I was pretty content to just stare at Ender, though I think it took about a day for the real awe to set in.
The name Olivander doesn’t have any special significance for our family, we found it in a baby name book, and both quite liked it. We figured it’s nice and unique without being so weird sounding that he’ll get teased or be embarrassed. I have no idea what the “right” way to pronounce it is, but we’re saying it like a mash-up of Oliver and Alexander.
Olivander means “protector of the olive tree” which we thought was kind of cool. As a side note, Oliver means “olive tree” but it can also mean “elf army,” which is sort of awesome. We did NOT get the name Olivander from Harry Potter, though one of the characters is named Mr. Ollivander, and I’m sure people will assume that no matter what we say. Ah well.
Ender is a character from a favorite sci-fi book, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. We figure if he doesn’t like that nickname when get gets older, he can always go by Ollie or Van or even Oliver. Olivander is the name I used while he was in the womb, and Ender seems like a different creature than the imaginary baby I carried around for nine months. To us he looks like an Ender.
Willow was our wedding photographer, and she took most of the photos during the birth, as well as keeping me stocked in ice chips (love ice chips) and probably helping out in lots of other ways that I was too busy to notice. She also took a flipbook worth of photos of Ender crowning, which I will not be sharing, and which make me wince. Lots. I have a second degree tear, which I’d hoped to avoid, but I realize in terms of tearing it could be much worse.
Of course, every minute of the pain was worth it, but I wouldn’t say it was necessary. I wasn’t sure where my needle fear would balance with pain tolerance, and now I know: next time I’m getting the epidural.
It’s interesting to me that some of the people who set out to have a natural birth say they’re doing it that way because they want to be “present” for the birth, to be aware of the whole experience. For myself, I think I would have been much more aware and present had I had less pain. I think I would have been mentally defeated pretty early on without the nubain and the support of both my husband and doula(s). Transition was impossible, and I kept repeating, “I don’t want to,” because I realized, “I can’t,” was pretty much unhelpful and, frankly, untrue as evidenced by human history. The only real upside I can about the pain is that it made the pushing phase seem tolerable by comparison, but even with that, I think I may have had more energy for it if I hadn’t been so spent by transition.
I am glad it went the way it went. I am also glad it’s over.
The next morning:
Look at me, wearing clothes. That didn’t happen much while at the hospital, they aren’t kidding when they say modesty flies out the door.
Holding him is incredible. I can’t believe how soft he is.
With our insurance we get two days at the hospital from time of birth, and since Ender was kind enough to be born just after midnight, it was closer to three days, which made me feel much more secure about the whole healthy newborn thing, especially since my labor was fairly short- they only had time to give me one dose of antibiotics for the GBS.
I kept asking people if his nose looked yellow, but they periodically tested his bilirubin levels (the way they measure jaundice) and they were fine… right up until the point that they jumped up to not fine. I think that was sometime late Thursday, and unfortunately they weren’t able to get a blood test on him until Friday, when we were supposed to be discharged.
The levels were high enough that they told us he needed to stay another night… and under the UV lamps the whole time.
That was tough news… one of the things we loved about the hospital was that we had the option of keeping him with us the whole time we were there, and the UV lamps meant our time with him was limited to half hour feedings every three hours.
There were a few upsides to this though. The first one was that they wanted to supplement my milk with a little formula after each feeding to make sure he was getting enough (and flushing out his system). This gave Matt and opportunity to feed Ender, which he wouldn’t have had otherwise since everyone says don’t introduce a bottle until 4 weeks etc, etc.
Probably the biggest upside of being separated from him is that, as much as it sucked, it gave us a chance to sleep in solid 3 hour blocks. The last two nights had been disrupted by every little sound he made, every big sound he made, as we struggled to figure out how to get him to sleep, and the frequent checks by nurses on both his and my health. The third day, where I was technically discharged from the hospital (we stayed on as “boarders” at no cost) there were no checkups, and no fussing, but we still had access to lactation consultants and knew our baby was being taken care of. So even though it was emotionally rough, we both felt much better for the extra rest and support the next day, and I think we went home from the hospital much more recovered than most people do. We had to continue to monitor Ender’s bilirubin levels, and today they finally went down on their own. He’s still a tiny bit fake-tan looking, but he’s beautiful anyway and with any luck his color will return completely to normal over the next day or so.
Of course the final benefit was that being away from him made us appreciate being with him, and gave us an extra drop of patience for the next week of sleep deprivation. It’s anyone’s guess how long that will last, but for now, we’re all three feeling pretty good.
I’ll try to post more photos later this week.
Nice Niece Bedroom
A little while ago my sister-in-law (J) moved with her daughters to a new house. I offered to redo the girls’ bedroom, which I’m sure they regretted agreeing to since it ended up taking me about a year to finish.
When they moved in, the bedroom was a little boy’s room with a duck border and a single wallpapered wall (I think it was kind of a meadow/lake thing? To go with the ducks?) with the other three walls painted cream.
The girls, aged 7 and 5 (8 and 6 by the time I finished, I was not over stating how insane long it took me to finish) liked the ducks, but we wanted to give them a fresh room and they were excited to have a room painted to their specs. (Somewhat. Even without previous experience, I know better than to take my design instruction 100% from kids, otherwise the room would have ended up half neon orange and half neon pink. Just saying.)
The older niece (we’ll call her N1) wanted a jungle/forest room, and the younger (N2) wanted a princess room, because when kids are sharing, nothing is simple. So I decided to do a sort of enchanted forest thing, with animals climbing the walls for N1 and a floating castle peeking through the trees for N2.
Most childrens’ rooms can end up looking awfully cartoon-y. We seem to have the notion that all childrens’ decor must be primary colors, or at least painfully bright, and if it works for a 6 year old they’d better outgrow it by the time they’re 7. My goal was to design a room that would work for both N1 and N2, and preferably continue to work for them as they grew into preteens.
The first thing we did was hang up the curtains from their old room, then started stripping wallpaper. This was gunky messy work, and the girls were able to help which I think they both enjoyed.
The texture left on the stripped wall was cool, almost intentional looking. It reminded me of a map, and made a nice backdrop to the globe. It almost seemed a shame to paint over it, but of course, we painted over it. In picking paint we (J and I) stuck to two main background colors. As I said, I wanted something that could grow with the girls, so we went with fairly muted colors: a yellowish bamboo green and a greyed out purple. The green went up first. J did most of the painting.
It’s always hard for me to tell how a color is going to look once you get it on the wall, but I LOVED the green.
Next I put up masking tape, in a non-pattern pattern to represent “trees.” I used two different widths of tape to keep it from looking overly ordered. Since the final intended effect would be flat, I hoped it would also create a sense of depth that unified width “trees” would not.
The effect of the tape on the green walls was striking. I think the girls would have been happy if we’d just left it like that.
For the next step we (and again, in this case we means J) painted over everything in our purple color. This didn’t look nearly as cool as the tape on green, and it stayed this way for several months which I felt a little bit bad about. N1 and N2 were remarkably patient, though I think every time I saw them N2 would ask me when I was going to paint her side pink. Eventually, I got around to the next step, painting clouds on top of the purple. This is a terribly stereotypical little-kid room motif, but I like to think I put a different spin on it. Once again, J did most of the actual painting after I outlined the cloud shapes on the wall.
With all the clouds up, I was able to start detailing the clouds. From here on, I think I can honestly say I did all the painting, rather than just stealing credit from J. 
I outlined the clouds in a metalic paint that was supposed to be silver, but looked more gold or bronze depending on the light. It was a much darker color than I expected, which I think worked out quite well. One of these days I’ll learn to make art that looks cool according to plan instead of accident, but for now, I’ll take what I can get.
Once I finished all the outlines, I started sketching in the little details, a castle for N2 and some jungle animals for N1. N2 only got the one fantasy element because the castle took so much more work than the animals. I googled Disney castles and pulled a bunch of images that I thought N2 would like, then freehanded it with pencil on the wall. I don’t quite have the painting confidence to just paint without pre-sketching, and chalk didn’t work, but fortunately the pencil came off in the end.
The details went pretty quickly, but I still had to leave long gaps between steps because I don’t live super close.
Once the pencil was up I was able to start painting. This took far longer than I expected, because the undercolor, white, required several coats to look convincing. Once I got the white up however, the color went on more rapidly. Of course N2 got a PINK castle. I tried to match the color to the comforters and curtains, but I think I ended up going a little overboard and used a color that looked more like a highlighter exploded on the wall. N2 LOVES it though, so I guess that’s all that matters.
N1 got three animals. She specifically requested a monkey and a cat, but I decided she also needed a koala. I think the cat is her favorite, and the spots were quite fun to paint.
I intentionally kept the wall facing their beds a little calmer than the wall behind their pillows, with the notion that you don’t want anything TOO exciting to look at while you’re trying to sleep.
I have insomnia, so probably I’m a little oversensitive about that. We didn’t really have any plans for the door or the closet door, so I was pleasantly surprised that the cream color looked nice against the mural, and we didn’t have to do anything at all. The blue carpet does not match quite so nicely unfortunately, but it’s not a big deal. I think the eventual plan is to pull it out and restore the wood floors underneath, which should look incredible. All in all I think the room turned out well.
N1′s animals are mostly orange with a bit of the pink, and N2′s pink castle has touches of orange to tie them together.
The girls added the butterfly stickers.
Ultimately I’m not sure I succeeded in giving them a room that will stay timely into their teens. N2′s castle especially is pretty age specific, very little girl. Despite my attempt to broaden the visual style with black outlines and stark, limited color, I can’t quite see N2 wanting the hot pink princess castle next to her bed when she’s ten. At least it gave them a dramatically different space and they had a lot of imput in the creation. Possibly they would have been happier with something cartoon-y-er, I’m not sure. I honestly don’t know that I could have done a good job on a typical cartoon style childrens’ mural anyway. This simplified flat color with line detail is much more suitable to my artistic style.
Now of course, I’m planning my second mural/room design, for our baby‘s bedroom. I have the same goal of longevity (so I don’t have to paint over it in 4 years) that I had for my nieces’ room. My friend Kim is going to help me with the painting since I’m getting less mobile by the day, and also because she loves painting murals and is awesome at it. Hope to have something to post photos of soon.
Baby “Pictures”
Ultrasound photos are nothing like as clear as I thought.
Actually, I believe they do have the fancy 3-d ultrasounds now, that let you get a much clearer picture, but we didn’t get one of those.
Instead, the printouts were Xerox-looking black and white images that ranged from blurry to mildly creepy (see right). That said, the image on the screen, complete with real-time motion, was much clearer than any of the prints, and totally amazing. Aside from whatever disorders the ultrasound is supposed to screen for (everything looks normal), it is rather comforting to actually see that HOLY CRAP there’s an actual BABY inside me.
In fact, there’s a baby BOY inside me. The tech was 95% that we’re having a boy, and the doctor seemed even more sure.
One of the coolest looking things from the ultrasound (of which they unfortunately didn’t get a picture) was the baby’s spine. Initially it was one of the only things I could identify from the shifting grey blob. It looked a bit like goose-neck – you know, the bendy bit on a lamp? The hands and legs were also pretty incredible, and it was wonderful to see the baby moving around since, as of last Thursday (ultrasound day) I hadn’t really felt anything that I was sure was baby movement. I’m feeling much more now, though it’s still hard to distinguish between a restless baby and my body making normal body noises. At my midwife appointment on Monday, it took a while to get a heart beat (150) because the baby kept kicking the sonogram. I’m sure soon enough the baby movement will be more than obvious. Right now I mostly feel him moving when I’m lying down and not distracted by anything.
We do not have any names picked out yet. I’m pouring through baby name books nearly every day. We are NOT looking for suggestions. 
Currently the plan (once we pick a name) is to keep it secret until the baby is born. I’m told that when a baby is a fetus, friends, family and even strangers feel free to tell you exactly why the name you’ve picked is terrible, but that once the baby is born, people are a bit more likely to hear it as the baby’s name rather than a topic for discussion.
We got a total of 9 ultrasound images, but these were the only ones that were clear enough to share. Like most babies, he’s obviously not interested in posing for the camera. Next photos should be sometime in June.
Octopus’s Garden
Here’s some art:
I started this piece several months ago. Somewhere along the line I went mad with power and blacked in way too much, and once I realized it, I sort of stopped liking it. I’ve been trying to use more contrast of both black vs white and texture vs space, but I think this one would have been better sticking to the texture play. Now it’s a bit too heavy, but it’s still technically worth showing I suppose, so here you are.
I could probably help the balance of this piece by putting a bit more black in the white areas of the top right quarter, but for the moment I’m sick of looking at it, so I’m calling it done.
Rescue
If you’ve been following my twitter stream you’ve probably already heard that one of my cats is diabetic. She’s fine, never actually got to the point where she was acting weird (which made figuring out what was wrong a bit difficult) but my brain has been pretty cat centered last couple weeks.
Chyna is the cat with diabetes. We’ve got her on special food and we’re giving her insulin injections twice a day (which I mind much more than she does). The vet shaved a patch on her back to make it easier for us at first, so now she looks like she’s got a sunroof. We couldn’t help laughing at her for the first couple days.
The drawing below is of Tricky, the other cat (because she’s the one who was finally willing to look at my phone and give me a good face photo). She added to the sick cat confusion by puking all over (just hairballs) just as Chyna got her infection so we took the wrong cat to the vet at first.
This week’s Illustration Friday is “Rescue.” The first thing I thought of was rescue animals, cats and dogs. (And since I’ve been sick this week, drawing a cat was an easy option.) Chyna was a rescue cat, Matt got her from a foster program before I met him. Tricky was also I suppose, just not officially. She was a pregnant stray when she adopted us.
We’ll probably always go with rescue cats, I’ve never really understood why so many people pay hundreds from breeders when there are so many unwanted cats in shelters. My friend Kim got a beautiful kitten from a shelter last year (Olive is lovable, though bitey, but that’s cats for you).
I kind of get it more with dogs. Breed plays into personality quite a lot, plus, no matter how much the experts say dogs are never too old to be retrained, it’s obvious early habits make a much bigger difference with an animal that can rip your throat out if it gets too scared. Abuse and poor training can really screw up a dog, while with a cat the worse you’ll get is a nuisance.
Rescue dogs can be a bit of a gamble, though the rescue dogs I’ve met have been wonderful, including a shepherd mix that probably saved my niece from a coyote when she was three (nope, not exaggerating). When we went to get Kim’s kitten, she was thinking she might get a dog instead.
We found an absolutely sweet 9 month old dog, a Pharoah Hound mix (I’d never heard of them) that was quiet and friendly, and seemed like she’d be a great pet for Kim. We asked at the desk if they thought she would make a good first dog, and we were told, regretfully, No.
The dog was “trained” on puppy pads, which means it had learned to go to the bathroom right on the floor, which is, you know, fantabulous. Also, the dog had chewed up every bit of wooden furniture in the house, while left alone all day as the owner woked.
That’s the tragedy of rescue animals. You get a fair number of animals like Chyna and Tricky, born strays from stray parents. You’ll find animals that are left behind when an owner dies, or becomes homeless, or just gets too old to care for it. Too often though, the pets you find in shelters are animals that are abandoned, or returned, because the ownder simply doesn’t want them anymore.
The cat isn’t as cute as it was when it was a kitten and it scratches up the couches, pees on the carpet. The dog is too much work, and it hasn’t been trained, so now it’s unmanagable, even dangerous. Sure, those that are abused or starved, those animals are far sadder. It’s so easy to justify taking back a “bad” animal. We forget that animals are living beings and not toys. Someone else will take them.
I have been a bad pet owner. Now Matt and I have cats that are such prizes it makes me cringe with regret. The drawing I did of tricky doesn’t express what a sniffy cat she is. If you’ve ever had a sniffy cat, you know what I mean. When we first got her she couldn’t figure out how to sit on a lap and now she’ll run to curl up with you as soon as you sit down. When I pick her up, she meows and struggles in complaint, but the whole time she purrs so loudly you can hear her across a room.
Chyna does everything timidly, primly, as though she’s made of glass, and you feel a bit like she is when you pick her up. When she’s upset she hides her face against you. At night when I brush my teeth, she likes to attack my socks. She is always utterly happy to be in the same room with us. It takes my breath away.
Fast Drawings
For this week’s Illustration Friday, “Fast” I thought I’d do a set of quick sketches.
Click on any image to see a larger version. Everyone knows cheetahs are the fastest land animals:
According to wisegeek, cheetahs run up to 70 mph. I run about 0.70 miles per hour on a good day.
The fastest water animal, I had to look up.
This is a sailfish, which I had heard of but had never really thought about much. They’re actually pretty cool looking, like a dinosaur mixed with a swordfish. Like the cheetah, sailfish travel 70 mph, so in a triathlon I suppose they’d be about evenly matched. Until they got to the biking portion, because everyone knows fish can’t ride bikes.
Finally, the fastest animal of the air is the aptly named Sir Not Appearing in this Film. Wait. I mean the aptly named swift.
Swifts fly through the air at 106 mph, making them the fastest animal in the world (probably not great in the triathlon though).
I’m pretty happy with how the sailfish and the swifts turned out. I got the cutout effect by reverse selecting the subjects, and darkening the paper grain to add in a more noticable texture. The cheetah is ok, but I always have a tough time with cats for some reason. This one looks a bit like a monkey or a hyena, but as my cats go, it’s acceptable.
Striped African Tree Rat
Last month my dad had a Realtors’ conference in DC, so Matt and I decided to make a vacation of it, which gave us a chance to actually see my parents this year (it’s not easy to get to Oregon).
Dad didn’t have a whole lot of time for touristy things, but he was able to join Matt, Mom and I at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum before the conference started. Everyone else wanted to see the rocks and gems section. I wasn’t too enthused about that part, until I remembered that it’s only gems I could care less about. I actually quite like rocks. In the display I was especially fascinated by all the cool rock formations, the amazing variety of shape and texture. The above reminded me of nothing more than an alien city, and I though several crystals made such pretty patterns that they’d also make excellent computer backgrounds.
I didn’t need to warm up to the rest of the museum, I mean, who wouldn’t love looking at deep sea animals, frozen hunting scenes, and dinosaur bones?
I guess my dad loved it even more than the rest of us.** I enjoyed the bones, and they made such cool light patterns in on the floor that I think I’m going to need to draw them at some point, but my favorite part of the museum were the current animals. True, they’re dead, but it’s pretty rare that you get to look at animals up close, to get a sense for their details, scale, and posture. We have a natural history museum in Cleveland, and it’s actually quite good, but it’s hard to compete with the National Museum.
** I am SO not responsible if you try to kiss the T-Rex and get yourself kicked out or arrested.
I probably spent far too long in the mammal room, taking photos of creatures great and small. When I get an opportunity like that it’s hard to think about anything but how many great photo-references I’m getting for drawings. Natural-ish zoos are great, but sometimes the animals move too quick to capture, or don’t appear at all. When they’re stuffed, it’s not exactly a problem. I especially liked the bats. I don’t often get to look closely at bat wings, and I can’t wait to do some sketching.
Now for an apparently unrelated aside.
I have to tell you a story. Almost ten years ago, I started my first year at the University of Notre Dame. There are small differences in the natural worlds of South Bend and Eugene, possibly caused as much by perspective, my newfound freedom, as distance. I saw birds hopping around amongst the fall leaves and noticed that the way they moved made them blend perfectly with the leaves rolling in the wind, effectively hiding them. Some differences however were not due to mere observation. The climate in South Bend is more extreme, there aren’t as many evergreens. And within my first few days there, I started to glimpse a timid little creature with dramatic markings on its face and sides, which I didn’t recognize at all.
It never occurred to me to ask anyone what they were, instead I referenced my mammal book, which I’d conveniently brought from home.
It took me a while, but I eventually found an entry that seemed to match the creatures. After closing the book I immediately forgot what they were called, confusing several adjacent pages, and mentally labeled my find the Striped African Tree Rat. I couldn’t imagine how they’d made it all the way to Indiana. Possibly they were an invasive species, brought over in fruit boxes. There certainly seemed to be a lot of them.
I didn’t think too much more about it. The world is flat does not just apply to computers and germs, little creatures can get all over the place thanks to our carelessness, so really, it seemed only mildly strange.
About a year later, I went on a week long trip to Sunriver, Oregon with a couple of my fencing buddies and my godfather Mike. We’d been there for a couple days when the four of us were hanging out on the second floor porch, among the pine trees. I looked out at the endless poles of tree trunks, and on a tree just fifty feet away, I saw one of my Striped African Tree Rats.
They’ve spread, I thought, and before I really had a chance to think, I pointed it out. My godfather gave me his best incredulous look. “Meagan. That’s a chipmunk.”
I know. You’re thinking I’m a moron. Maybe I am.
But last month, with Matt and my parents, I was wandering around the small mammals exhibit when I came across unexpected redemption. In fact, I came across a chipmunk. Behold:
*Ok, yes, I know Cambodia is nowhere near Africa but you have to admit, it’s a freaking chipmunk.
Personal Space (for cats)
We all know cats are territorial animals. When you’re looking to add a second cat to a household, one of the common recommendations is to pay attention to the gender of the cats. The best combinations are Male and Female or Male and Male. Female and Female is about as bad as it gets in terms of creating catfights.
Matt and I didn’t necessarily have a choice when it came to our second cat, or we did, but Tricky (the cat) made it for us. We’d been wondering for a while what to do about the stray cat on Matt’s street that we were both trying to deny we were growing attached to, and when we realized she was pregnant, we felt like we had to adopt her. (Morepictures of kittens and the sleepy mom posted earlier).
We expected problems between Tricky and Chyna, particularly during the pregnant and kitten problem, but we hoped they’d sort of settle down when we moved out, sort of resetting the whole territory issue. It worked to some extent, but there’s always been an undercurrent of tension that rises and falls depending on how much we’re home, the weather, kitty whims. The two of them could be curled up together on the couch and the next day fighting like mortal enemies. Which, in some respects, they probably are.
It took us a while to realize that the largest factor in our cat’s relationship was Matt and my cleanliness.
The apartment is good sized for a one bedroom, about 950 square feet. The bedroom is large, 17X12. For two people, it’s squished, but livable. For two cats, we thought it would be fine, and sometimes it is. Their square footage is more limited than ours because Matt and I are both allergic to cats: they aren’t allowed in the bedroom. That knocks their shared area down to about 750, which you’d think for two small animals, would still be enough.
When we first moved into the condo, we didn’t have nearly enough space. For Matt and me it’s fine, but our stuff is another matter. Between the two of us, we just have too much crap for one small apartment. Slowly we carved through it, donating or throwing away things we didn’t really need. By the time we got married, the boxes of un-placed crap had shrunk considerably, but the newly found carpet space was quickly swallowed up by new boxes: wedding presents.
In theory we ought to have been able to put most of the wedding stuff AWAY somewhere, getting rid of whatever its replacing, but right now we are STILL working on thank you notes (we’re awful) and we don’t want to put anything away until the notes are sent. So we have a permanent collection of stuff piled in one part of the living room. Thanks to this accumilation of stuff, we have now found the exact tipping point for cats that like each other and cats that hate each other. It’s actually pretty fascinating.
When you factor in furniture, appliances and boxes, actual usable space for our cats is probably around 500 square feet. The pure number isn’t the only factor though, much of it has to do with perception. The dining room table for example, doesn’t really take away any space from the cats. If anything, it adds square footage because the cats are able to use the floor beneath it, the chairs (some of their favorite playthings when they’re friends and playing together) and, even though we try to keep them off, the table top itself. This isn’t reality however, because while their usable space is unaffected, there’s a clear disruption in their perception of space: in the form of a big wooden object. This is further complicated if there happens to be clutter on top of the table, or on the chairs. The couch is similar: although it’s their most frequently used pieces of furniture, it’s clearly taking up part of their territorial space.
Our cats are tenuously friends, and they have exactly enough space. The slightest change in perception can make them enemies again. If a stacked box is moved down to the floor, the cats have less space than they did a second ago. The air fills with growls and hisses, often nowhere in the proximity of the guilty box.
My favorite variable is Matt’s drying rack. This is one of the typical college dorm types, light narrow wood, collapsible and flimsy. While it’s being used it’s a nuisance to Matt and I, but doesn’t change the cats’ actual space at all. In spite of that, Matt’s drying rack is guaranteed to cause new fights every time he uses it.
I have to think that purely open space wouldn’t be ideal either. Chyna likes her hiding spots even when she and Tricky aren’t clawing at each other. Tricky meanwhile likes climbing on top of things, being up high. The more open space they have, the happier and less touchy our cats seem to be, but this needs to be balanced with their “safe” places for them to be comfortable. I just think it’s interesting that this can all be changed by something as simple as a wet sweater.